Catalysts of Peace
by Quintain Apprentince of Alduin
Summary: For millenia, the Kingdoms of Remnant believed their only threat came from the Grimm. Cinder Fall discovers a new threat from beyond the edge of the galaxy.


**Prologue: Arrival**

* * *

A large ship exited FTL, its length a little under two kilometers long, appearing to be almost entirely made of a dark beige stone surrounding a large spinal mount weapon and massive thrusters on the back. It had flown to the Hades Gamma cluster by Mass Relay before using standard drive core FTL to fly into a nearby star system before flying towards a nearby gas giant, its orange and white clouds swirling below. The ship discharged the static electricity built up in its drive core from the travel to the new system while, inside, the occupants of the craft ran system checks and checked on the thousands of pods lining the walls and ceiling of the primary chambers of the vessel. Once they finished the core discharge, the ship made a small FTL jump towards the only blue-green, habitable, planet in the system.

The captain of the ship maneuvered the ship into a stable orbit around the planet, avoiding the debris from the planet's lone, partly shattered, satellite. It then scanned the planet for any sort of civilization and what species might live on the world. The world itself seemed rather uninteresting, primarily wild with four large cities visible from orbit. Pre-spaceflight, supposedly, given the lack of any orbital infrastructure or artificial communication satellites. Preliminary scans detected human DNA signatures, between ninty to ninty-five percent match for baseline human samples.

The captain clicked, operating the primary control console. "All units, we are approaching a human colony. Prepare the swarms to neutralize the humans."

The captain maneuvered the ship towards one of the smaller settlements away from the larger cities, since they would be easier targets to subdue. The large ship entered the atmosphere slowly, to avoid detection.

* * *

Three humans walked down a dirt road that connected to the kingdom of Vale; Cinder Fall, Emerald and Mercury Black. Their mission had been a partial success, Cinder having taken part of the Fall Maiden's soul and thus her powers. Cinder opened her palm, testing out her new abilities by making a lick of fire dance between her fingers. Meanwhile, Emerald was checking their backpack of supplies.

"We might want to stop by the next village," she commented. "We are starting to run a little low on a majority of our supplies."

"What, exactly?" Cinder replied, keeping an eye on the fire.

"Food and water, mostly." Emerald replied. "Some medical supplies and spare parts for Mercury's legs too. That huntsman did more damage than it looked."

Cinder hummed in agreement as they continued walking, taking a left at a fork in the road towards a nearby village. Suddenly, the sky darkened, as if a large cloud blocked the sun. However, the shape of the shadow was too unnatural to be a cloud. Cinder looked up and spotted a massive construct, seemingly made out of some sort of stone and metal. Lightning arched from its hull as a cloud of insects descended down onto the village.

* * *

A huntress wearing a light gray skirt with a darker gray shirt and a dark gray jacket walked towards a bull faunus who was waist-deep inside the local CCTS relay tower. The huntress' name was Ash, she had been ordered by the headmaster of Beacon to defend this small village, as some Intel reports claimed that there was a large horde of Grimm coming this direction. Ash was a bit skeptical about this, since she was the only huntress sent, but knew better than to question orders.

"What's the situation, Marron?" Ash asked, leaning on her chainsword.

The brown bull faunus backed out of the maintenance shaft in the tower and dusted off his pants before turning towards Ash. "Nothin' is damaged or missing. Everythin' is working as the day it was built here. If I didn' know any better, I would say someone is jammin' us."

"Jamming the CCTS tower?" Ash inquired, an eyebrow raised. "Is that even possible?"

"Yep," Marron hummed, looking at the relay. "Howev'r, it would need to be either more advanced than Atlas tech or made by Atlas. Neither of those are likely."

A human woman walked up with a young girl no older than eight holding her hand and carrying a stuffed bunny in her other arm. Both had dark blue eyes but the mother had bright red hair color while the young girl had a dark pink hair color. Ash smiled at the young family.

"Rubrum, Rosea, how are you two today?" She asked.

"We're okay." Rubrum replied with a happy smile. "Rosea wanted to see how her favorite huntress was doing." Rosea hid behind her bunny when Rubrum betrayed her, making Ash smile.

"Well, Rosea, I'm doing pretty well. What about you?" Ash cooed to the little girl, crouching down to look her in the face.

"I'm okay," Rosea answered with a smile. "Guess what? I'm going to be combat school next week so I can be a huntress, just like you!"

All the adults chuckled as Ash smiled at the girl, ruffling up her hair. "You'll make an excellent huntress, Rosea."

Suddenly, there was some distant rumbling, like thunder. Rosea clung onto Rubrum's leg as the adults started scanning the area for the source of the sound. Rosea screamed and pointed at the sky.

"Mommy! What is that?"

Ash pulled up her chainsword, turning it into its assault rifle form. Using the scouting scope she installed on the top, she took a look where Rosea pointed. In the sky was a massive construct, at least one and a half kilometers long, that appeared to be made out of steel and stone. It was surrounded by a brownish cloud that arched lightning around it as it noiselessly glided towards the village. It definitely wasn't Atlasean in origin. A hatch at the bottom of the construct opened up, as a massive swarm of some sort of insect started swarming down towards the village.

"Everyone to the safehouse,"Ash said calmly. When no one moved, she got more aggressive. "Go! Now! I'll cover you!"

Everyone started to run as the swarm entered the village, running towards the safehouse at the center. Ash tried her best to hold off the swarms, but the sheer amount of insects overwhelmed her feeble attempts to cover the villagers, each insect she killed with a burst of her rifle, five more replaced it. One insect landed on her neck and stung Ash. Ash growled and pulled the strange looking insect off, looking like no insect she has ever seen before. It was a brown color with no discernible eyes, mouth, or any other way for it to be aware of its surroundings, it had only four legs, which flailed about as she held it in her hand, and a pair of wings on its back.

Ash quickly tossed it on the ground, about to pull her weapon back up to fire at the swarms again, but she suddenly froze solid. All she could do is watch as the swarms stung and froze everyone in sight. Ash wondered what was causing this, but was sure that all the panic would attract Grimm.

Her concerns were confirmed as a Beowolf growled and stalked out of the forest, eyeing Ash with glowing eyes. Ash closed her eyes as she waited for the killing blow, she was frozen and defenseless against this Grimm. The blow never came as there was the sound of an energy weapon discharging. She opened one eye to see that the Beowolf was practically torn in two, the top half of the Grimm snarling in defiance. Ash was hopeful that this meant that there were reinfocements coming, but her hope was short lived as a four-eyed insectoid humanoid landed in front of her, the wings of these _things_ retracting into their bodies. They seemed to communicate through warbles and chirps, as that was the only sound they made as they looked at her. Two more came down with a pod, Ash's eyes widening as the pod opened up like a mouth and pulled her in.

* * *

Cinder watched with interest as the insectoid creatures landed. It was clear they were here for abduction, an ironically sterotypical thing for aliens to do. They had to be aliens, they were far too different from anything on Remnant, not to mention they were incredibly advanced. One shot from their assault rifle equivalents blasted a beowolf in half. They were powerful and advanced, and had a small army. Cinder noticed their ship stand up on its end, landing at the center of the village. Cinder got up, slowly walking towards the village.

"Cinder!" Emerald hissed, her eyes wide with fear. "What are you doing!?"

"Talking to them," Cinder explained. "If we can talk to them, and get their cooperation, we would have an army more advanced then Atlas at our disposal."

"If you say so, Cinder." Emerald mumbled, a little hesitant. "... What would they want in return?"

"What does it look like?" Mercury remarked. "They'll want humans and faunus. They are abducting these people for a reason, right?"

Cinder nodded, walking towards the village. "This will be a piece of cake."


End file.
